I persisted through this book for one reason: I NEEDED to know who the killer was. That’s it. That’s the only reason. As a mystery, it is compelling, twisty and enjoyable. As a romance, it made me want to throw my e-reader against a wall.

So many of the secondary characters are total assholes. Truly. Even our heroine is a selfish dickwad. Across the characters, sometimes that asshole-ness is because they’re just assholes. For example, Harriet’s mother is a selfish, snobby, uncaring woman and treats her daughter abominably. And our heroine, Harriet? When Harriet presents the idea of her article to Nic, she positions it as a way to help Nic’s sister’s case. That’s why Nic says yes to working with Harriet. Harriet doesn’t tell him that she’s possibly going to get her old job back off the back of this article. Which I guess, everyone needs to benefit, but at least be upfront about it.

Meanwhile, the whole time Nic’s sister’s case is presented as really super urgent and action must be taken immediately to help her, but days will go by with no action taken by Harriet in the investigation for the article. Instead, Harriet just mopes. Nic’s sister is also annoying: she’s aggressive, short-tempered and can’t be relied on to be professional in professional settings. Yes, some of it is the kind of nonsense that young, angsty people get up to before their frontal cortex is fully developed, but it drove me scatty.

I sometimes forget that I was young and dumb once. I didn’t communicate clearly or make the brave choice. Perhaps because my twenties are now distant history, I find myself getting frustrated by poor communication between Harriet and Nic. Things are so fraught and they never tell each other the full truth. It’s all assumptions and miscommunication which I find tiresome.

There is one particular instance that I just couldn’t wrap my head around, but it happens really late in the book, so I’ve hidden it behind spoiler tags.

Up to this point, Harriet has been MEGA deceptive in her motives and actions. She does so many shitty things, it’s hard to think of her as a romantic lead. So it won’t be shocking to you that I didn’t buy the HEA. It just made Nic look like a chump for taking her back. Did I mention it’s a second chance romance?

The mystery worked for me because I was genuinely invested in the puzzle of who did it and why, even if the people solving that puzzle were awful. But the romance did not work for me because I didn’t much like the leads as people so I didn’t care about their HEA, such as it is.

If you’re going to read this book, I strongly recommend focusing only on the mystery and just skimming the romance parts. I’m so irritated by it, I could spit because the mystery is interesting (not groundbreaking or anything, but interesting to read nonetheless) and with more likeable leads being kinder, the romance could have been amazing.